Discussion: Network Discovery

Hellbovine

Hellbovine

Well-Known Member
I'm trying to figure out which registry key is responsible for a scenario when I install Windows 10 without internet. At the desktop if you plug in the ethernet cable it will suddenly give you a very finicky pop-up that asks about network discovery and quickly disappears if you click somewhere else.

What I'm trying to do is find the registry key responsible for this pop-up, so that it prevents it from appearing at all, and just automatically chooses "No" for me, silently in the background. I've tried using registry compare tools, but because this setup process is also manipulating tons of other keys at the same time, I'm not confident in which one I'm looking for.

The other issue I have with this automated network configuration is that it also takes it upon itself to enable your firewall, even if you've manually disabled it prior to plugging in the ethernet cable, and furthermore even if you use a group policy key, it still ignores everything and enables the firewall anyway. I'd like to prevent this from happening as well.

UPDATE (AUGUST 31ST, 2023)
In the future I might convert this discussion into a guide, but right now I'm trying to focus on releasing version 2.0 of my Optimized Image guide, so this thread is on hold for the moment.

I ended up finding a full solution to everything I needed, but it's several different keys since you have to tweak both the network setup, as well as the firewall, and I would need to test it all again as a standalone set of tweaks to ensure that it works properly without all the numerous other tweaks I have on my custom image where I am using this network tweak.

For people that need this now, the TenForums link that Garlin posted will solve half of it, then to stop the firewall from enabling itself you have to manipulate some other keys. There are 3 dword keys labeled, "EnableFirewall" inside the registry path of \Defaults\FirewallPolicy\ which need to be set to 0 in order for Windows to truly default the Firewall to the off setting, and this stops nagging users to turn it back on too.

Also, keep in mind during this thread it was discovered that the firewall service must be enabled while toggling settings and experimenting or else many of the tweaks do not work properly. After all the tweaks you need are compiled and tested, then you can install them and disable the firewall service afterwards (if desired) and everything should work correctly in that scenario.
 
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I completely forgot to check TenForums, I should know better. I think I got distracted with my multitasking, since I'm also installing an ISO on a few computers. Thank you, I'll report back with the conclusion so that other people with the same question can see the results.
 
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It's solved now, thank you. It turns out that because I had the Windows Defender Firewall service stopped, it wasn't allowing me to make any changes. Even when I opened up the network and sharing settings page and tried to use a registry compare tool in there, it wasn't ever saving my settings or changing the registry. Enabling the service again made it all work as intended.

I was expecting to see an error or some text on the saying, "This service has been disabled..." like it does on the Indexer page when that service is disabled. There's definitely some room for improvement here on Microsoft's side.
 
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If anyone has a TenForum's account (I don't), they may want to let Brink know that article could be updated to include the Windows Defender Firewall in his list of services that must be enabled first.
 
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i never had that kind of popup ciz i remove all firewall rules right after installation via pwsh command then add my 11 custom rules via netsh advfirewall.
then set firewall policy to block all incoming & outgoing except those 11 rules plus show a notification wjen something want to connect to tcp .
 
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